


All's Fair in Love and War

by magelette



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-29
Updated: 2011-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:50:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magelette/pseuds/magelette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenneth Ford had fallen in love with the Blythe family years before the War, but it wasn't until the War that he'd realized what he'd lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All's Fair in Love and War

He was twenty-seven years old, and he thought he'd outgrown nightmares. Nightmares had no place when he was lying next to his wife, just months into their marriage. Nightmares weren't creatures of cream and gold skin, soft breasts tipped in rose. Nightmares belonged to the trenches he left behind in France.

Ken Ford had never expected Bertha Marilla Blythe, a girl he'd watched grow up from the time he was six and she was just a baby, to turn into a wanton as an adult. His young bride had blushed the first time he carried her over the threshold into their bedroom and laid her down on their double bed. But now, barely six months later, it was she who drew him into the bedroom when the mood struck her, be it night or day.

Rilla murmured in her sleep, moving her bare body closer to his. He loved the feeling of her skin against his own, because her softness was like nothing he'd ever felt before. Though some of his fellows had succumbed while he was in France, no other girl had as much as kissed his lips once he and Rilla made their promise, much less anything else. That didn't mean any of the lads hadn't. Except that Jem Blythe wasn't a lad so much as a brother in arms and the older brother of the man who had always been his best friend. And when he thought about how he lost that best friend, that was when the nightmares tended to strike.

Jem had always been a chum, but Walter was what Mother had always called a kindred spirit. All the Blythes were of Mother and Dad's mystical race of Joseph, but it was Walter that he'd always connected with. Jem was a man's man, not afraid to fight for his honor or the honor of his family. Walter tended to be only provoked by some great passion, and Ken admired that in him. Though Dad's poetic soul tended to be grounded by Mother's own practicality in him, Ken could appreciate Walter's flights of fantasy, even if he never said as much allowed. They were the closest in age of the Ingleside-House of Dreams brood, always paired together because of that. Until the Merediths moved into the Manse in Glen St. Mary's, he'd been the one that Walter showed his poetry to. But it all changed when Walter's eyes turned to worship at the altar of Faith Meredith, and Ken realized it was time to become more of a man like Jem.

He played football because he was good at it, and he flirted with girls because they made him feel good. He never took any of them seriously--not until he saw the woman that Rilla Blythe was becoming at the lighthouse dance all those years ago. He could see a bit of Walter in her, in the way she looked for the poetry in life, in the way that she embodied the beauty of everything he'd always tried to put into words. She even had the most adorable lisp, a remnant of the Roly Poly he'd known until she became Spider, all arms and legs in a coltish fashion.

Word came about Walter when he was in England on leave. He met up with Jem, Faith having just left. They saw each other occasionally during the war, but never often enough. He saw Walter all of once before he died, even if they exchanged letters whenever they could. Seeing Jem's face in the pub that night, knowing that he knew what Ken knew, broke what little control was left. That night became the only night Ken broke his promise with Rilla.

Jem's hair was wiry where Rilla's was soft, his body long and lean where hers rounded into gentle curves. The kisses had been harsh, the sex desperate. But they'd been young and drunk with both alcohol and grief, and Jem had offered comfort that they both needed, that Jem apparently hadn't been able to find with Faith only weeks before.

He couldn't help comparing the two, late at night. He didn't think of Jem as he thrust into Rilla, kissing her shoulder instead of nipping to the bone with his teeth. He didn't hear the guttural moans that he'd heard in the trenches on the few occasions their troops had met up, after he was promoted to Captain and Jem to Lieutenant. He wonders to this day how he survived those five months when Jem was missing, in prison, somewhere deep in enemy territory. His commanding officer had to restrain him that night, so that he wouldn't go tearing off into No Man's Land to find the only connection to Walter Blythe left available to him. If Rilla hadn't been a world away, it might've been different.

He could admit to falling in love with the family, to clinging to pieces of Walter's brothers and sisters because Walter would never have been his own. Fate and a reverend's daughter took care of that. The image of Rilla as a golden-haloed Madonna kept his heart warm in the trenches, especially when he imagined her being guarded by a gray-eyed angel. A part of him died in the trenches in France, and a part of him was buried in Courcelette. Ken knew he would never be whole again, but he did his best not to show that to his bride, or to the man that he now called brother-in-law.

The times he and Jem met after the war was over were always jovial. Jem's eyes might not have laughed with the same light as before, but he still greeted Ken like the brother he was. His embraces were a little tighter now, and he let go with a little more regret, but the love in Jem's eyes was still the pure love of a brother, grateful that he hadn't lost one more to the war.

He wondered sometimes, how much Jem remembered of those few nights of desperate comfort, cock against cock and hard flesh against flesh. It was nothing of the gentle, slow lovemaking that he knew with Rilla. That had been rough and harsh, blinding pain to help appease their already battered souls. That was sex to make them feel real again. This, the dimpled creature next to him who would someday bear his children, was what worth fighting for.

He kissed her white shoulder, and she opened her eyes sleepily, eyebrows arched in that adoringly questioning way. "Can't sleep?" she asked, wriggling closer, her breasts brushing up against his bare chest.

"Can't sleep," he echoed, this time kissing her lips.

"Maybe I can try to make you sleep," she whispered, looking more awake. Her hand found his hard shaft, small fingers gently massaging it until he pulsed with relief.

There was no mutual grabbing, no spit to smooth an otherwise painful passage. This was sweet love that Dad's novels had always taught him to respect. It was the storybook happily ever after that every man dreamed of, keeping him warm in the bitter winter of war.

But part of him remembered the nights of the battlefield, and the hoarse moans of the man underneath him, as they both remembered the brother they lost and loved so much.


End file.
